him, touching him on every side, affecting him in every feeling, -but still not strictly of man, in his constitution, progress, and destiny. Whether such a species of historic writing be not desirable, may excite an enquiry at least: but whether it would be instructive, can admit of none. Events would only seem important as experiments upon our nature and illustrations of our being. One valuable lesson we certainly should be taught, by the record of man as he is. Now we seem to spurn the page devoted to him, unless he be disfigured by ambition,stained by ruthless crimes and agitated by gigantic passions: we are accustomed only to take interest in what is violent, daring, tempestuous, in human conduct. We are not contented with the assurance that great passions exist: we are dissatisfied until they are called into play: until Pelides unclasps his zone and Hercules abandons his distaff. But then we should delight in the repose of these turbulent elements of character: we should lose all relish for those eccentricities which disturb the mighty mass and we should hail exclusively an elevation and preeminence of knowledge and virtue. We should resemble the student of nature who does not fix his eye upon a map of mountains in which lofty peaks and ridges can alone be seen, but would pursue the valley, would admire the landscape, would examine the general surface, as varied into gentle beauty or arrayed with luxuriant vegetation !

All, indeed, must allow that man is the proper subject of history. Its annals may often register events independent of us: phenomena of heaven and earth: storm and earthquake: fire and flood: but their interest arises from their relation to the circumstances, and their place in the observations, of man. Sorry should we be to contribute to the selfish vanity of our nature by magnifying its importance to the external world. The statement will rather humble us by teaching our responsibility. And surely it would be an idle affectation in man to subordinate his history to that of senseless matter or irrational being. He is made singular from all around him, and the most pious modesty does not forbid the assertion of that singularity. And what are knowledge and virtue but the instruments by

which we vindicate to ourselves an unrivalled pre-eminence ? But for him who moves upon its stage, the scenes of this awful theatre would have no significance, the evolutions of this mysterious drama would convey no lesson: on man the story, the action, and the moral depend. Of this human history, we may quote the language of Bacon as happily descriptive; though he penned it concerning a literary one: "Without it the history of the world seemeth to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye out that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of the person." And it is the design of this Paper to dwell upon different passages of the human narrative, to trace some of the steps by which the improvements of the species have been advanced and some of those principles by which the species itself has been impelled.-It was a noble sentiment which the ancient moralist uttered: "I deem nothing foreign to me which pertains to man.”* It is to be hoped that the moody temper which complacently, and even malignantly, beholds the baffled attempts of our race towards melioration, our often disappointed hopes of happiness, is confined to few. These struggles are noble, however ineffectual: might excite pity, could they not command admiration: and appear prophetic of an ultimate victory over the difficulties which have hitherto precluded success. Man has not yet deserved to become the butt of low conceit and fiend-like banter, at least from any who wear his form!

When we speak, however, of the human species, it is not in concurrence with the theory which some naturalists have held. We do not know, nor can we conceive of, the genus to which such a species can be referred. If it can be distinctly proved that man participates in so many characteristics of other animal tribes as to render his anomalous pretensions untenable,-let him be arranged in the great museum of nature according to the strictest laws of physical conformation. Let not a pectoral indication be allowed of itself to determine our station let limb and feature, trunk and extremity, confess the analogy and

"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."-Terence, Heauton

timorumenos.

demonstrate the alliance. What discovery would attend these concessions, it were presumptuous to anticipate: but our heraldic bearings might at least be affected. The field might be crowded, and the crest supported, by animals still but henceforth, not as symbols of high and lofty attributes,-only mementos of our kindred herds. Should, moreover, those figures be placed, in the language of the science, gardant, it is intolerable to think of that look of easy and impertinent familiarity with which they would appear to recognise and claim all the bonds of consanguinity.

Even what they think man to be who undertake his nicest classification, it is difficult to detect. An ancient philosopher is reported to have made the proud discovery, that he is a twolegged animal without feathers. Now though this does not assert that he is partly bird, it carries the implication: and in that case we are reminded of the hawk-headed man among the Egyptian hieroglyphics.—Helvetius makes the peculiarity of man above other orders to consist in his hands, and is carried away with delight at the happy absence in the human form of claws and hoofs.-Indeed, the question of humanity, of real uncompounded humanity, at least humanity of the highest grade, is now become a very entangled question, and is reducible to very delicate tests. There are four teeth which it is imperative on us to exhibit, or our claim to this honour will be refused. One more or less of the spinal joints will shut the highest rank against us, or throw it open. The hemisphere of the skull by its fall or protuberance, in addition to the secrets of phrenology, must dictate a more important reply to the enquiry, who we really are? A place, then, in the highest scale of human being, is of as difficult adjustment as of immense interest. It was, according to this scheme, a more emphatic compliment than any annotator on Shakspeare has hitherto imagined, when Antony declares over the corpse Brutus: "Nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man." Nor do our German neighbours seem neutral or indifferent in this controversy, for their name expresses their conviction that they are, all man. It is time for others, perhaps,

of

as well as our Teutonic brethren, to bid the Linnæan arrangement a high-minded defiance. The following passage from Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, most luminously explains the superiority of the human being: "He is, in short, a man in every condition; and we can learn nothing of his nature from the analogy of other animals. In his rudest state he is found to be above them; and in his greatest degeneracy never descends to their level. If we would know him, we must attend to himself, to the course of his life and the tenour of his conduct. With him the society appears to be as old as the individual, and the use of the tongue as universal as that of the hand or the foot. If there was a time in which he had his acquaintance with his own species to make, and his faculties to acquire, it is a time of which we have no record, and in relation to which our opinions can serve no purpose, and are supported by no evidence."

But not contented with this collocation of man, on the ground of a few similarities between him and some animal races, others have presumed on a theory more degrading, but also, very fortunately, more absurd. They aver that man was once a mere animal himself. By a part, a marine origin, it is believed, has been made out for him; but the major part opine that the evidence strongly favours his connection with the simia tribe. Monboddo contends for an admixture of the cat but he stands alone. The abettors of the more prevailing sentiment, that monkeys and men are of the same genus,-feel quite happy in the pedigree of ancestors who mowed and grimaced in eternal forests, and have even asserted, as a counterpart to the wondrous cat-man of Nicobar, that in the vicinity of Angola whole colonies of the ourang-outang exist,-evidently rising out of a lower department of being, but still moving upwards through the intermediate sections of that scale, to whose highest degrees we are esteemed weak-minded in confining the human prerogative and name. The grave and venerable judge referred

:

to seems to revel in the idea of what man has been and no small measure of his ecstacy springs outright from the contemplation of an appendage he attributes to the ancient man: an

appendage which, however elegant in some description of animals, has seldom been conceived to add a happy tapering or appropriate finish to the human form. But what if he had lived to see the mighty Chimpazee? There is not a range of enquiry more encumbered with assumption and folly than this. Moderns have not improved upon their predecessors, which they do in the larger number of cases: and as of old the mandrake was mysteriously regarded as the germ of man, so Voltaire saw no reason to disbelieve that the American sprung like a fungus out of the earth. Those who would wish to pursue this history of prodigies may be satisfied by some of the recitals of Pliny. Most undoubtedly had specimens presented themselves of any such equivocal state, I would have endeavoured to avail myself of them for your amusement and instruction. Could I have seized the shrub just opening into the animal,-or caught the animal just emerging into the man,-it might have tended to relieve the tedium of an Essay which can neither call to its aid the explanation of diagram nor the evidence of experiment.

This is not the place to argue the origin of man. It will be sufficient for us to begin with man in those conditions which history has preserved. And while many, in the prosecution of this most interesting study, are divided between the Saturnian dreams of poets and the animal stems of philosophers, let us simply trace our nature from that state whereof (to borrow a legal phrase) the memory of man showeth not to the contrary.— But here we cannot but express our astonishment at the gratuitous and reckless haste in which conclusions have been formed in this grand speculation.

It has, without a glimpse of proof, been affirmed, that the primæval state of man is savage. That savage state is represented as consisting merely of the dullest animal instincts. Perpendicular motion and attitude are, by the partizans of this sentiment, treated as inventions. A poor wild boy from the woods of Hanover was hailed as a trophy by the sect. His stunted mind was proclaimed to be in simple and undisguised nature. His inarticulate sounds were considered as demonstrative that man did not speak, (which no one supposed,) from